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henever a new boot arrives at PDHQ, it doesn’t take us long to pick out its major strengths and weaknesses. And when we do these initial assessments, we often find ourselves asking the same question: what’s the most important aspect of a boot? Weight? Traction? Looks? All significant, no doubt. But if the boot’s not comfortable to play in, if it doesn’t fit your foot, none of those things really matter.

“The benefit, the payoff, is close control and touch.”

That’s the thinking behind the Magnetico, Under Armour’s groundbreaking evolution of the ClutchFit silo. “I want to own fit,” says UA’s Senior Director of Football Footwear,

“I was saying ‘No, no, it’snot leather’. They couldn’tbelieve it.”

Antonio Zea, as he sits in our studio, rotating the finalised design in his hands, “and owning fit is not easy, because what is football fit? Even the definition of that is subjective.”

It’s a good point: what makes a boot comfortable changes from one person to the next, and there’s no guarantee that a boot that fits you perfectly will suit your teammate. As Zea puts it, “Everybody’s foot is different”. Having studied countless footballers’ feet, the analysts at UA noticed a theme. However slightly, nearly every player’s foot was being contorted to fit their boot. The Magnetico, though, aims to change that. Featuring an entirely re-engineered upper, the new boot really does mould to your foot, whatever shape it is.

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“We switched the model around, and said instead of a foot changing shape to fit the boot, let’s create a boot that fits the foot. Let’s find the material, or create a material, that fits around more shapes of feet,” explains Zea. That’s no simple task, as you might imagine. “It did present some challenges,” he admits. “The secret sauce, really, is the adhesive that binds the two layers [the synthetic coat and the stretch lining] together to create that composite. We lay the adhesive down in an auxetic pattern, in these shapes that really accentuate fit, and accentuate fit under stress, so when you’re in those extreme cutting movements, you still have perfect fit.”

“We switched the model around, and said instead of a foot changing shape to fit the boot, let’s create a boot that fits the foot. Let’s find the material, or create a material, that fits around more shapes of feet,” explains Zea. That’s no simple task, as you might imagine. “It did present some challenges,” he admits. “The secret sauce, really, is the adhesive that binds the two layers [the synthetic coat and the stretch lining] together to create that composite. We lay the adhesive down in an auxetic pattern, in these shapes that really accentuate fit, and accentuate fit under stress, so when you’re in those extreme cutting movements, you still have perfect fit.”

Interview with Antonio Zea, Pro:Direct HQ

“When you’re in those extreme cuttingmovements, you stillhave perfect fit.”

U.A Magnetico development

An auxetic material, for the uninitiated, is a material that becomes thicker when stretched. For a boot, that translates into a special kind of stretchiness – the kind of give that you don’t expect from a synthetic. Rather than battling against your bone structure, the Magnetico’s upper adapts to every individual, expanding and contracting around the contours of the foot to get the “perfect fit” Zea describes. It’s very clever stuff, and, combined with UA’s zero break-in promise, it’s what makes this a true upgrade over the ClutchFit. If, like us, you value comfort above all, you have to try the Magnetico.